During the USS Forrestal fire in 1967, there are reports of men perfoming extreme physical feats like moving seemingly immovable objects to save other men, pushing bombs overboard, and pushing aircraft overboard.

[hijack] My father was on board that ship.

He doesn't talk about the fire. He changes the subject the rare occasions it comes up, actually. [/hijack]

I've experienced this kind of adreneline rush once in my lifetime (neighbor's cat chased by pitbull). Afterwards, I remember everything I did, but at the time I was so hyper-focused on the situation that I never questioned or hesitated. It was a matter of not thinking about what I could do, but just doing it.

It makes sense, biologically. Extra strengh and lightning fast reflexes makes for a heck of a good survival instinct.

The interesting part of these senarios is that they involve not saving yourself, but saving someone else. How does altruism figure into all this? I suppose that "OMG! Save the baby!" makes sense biologically, too. We've all seen videos of a much smaller creature attacking a much larger predator to protect their offspring. Evolution probably favors those who can draw on "mommy strength" in a crisis.

Seconded those who mention that normally we use little muscle capacity, but an adrenaline rush allows us to over-exert ourselves. It's the equivalent of turning off the safety override. The "fight or flight" effect also means you can ignore pain for a short duration - evolution deems it more useful to survive than to get eaten by Mr Sabre Tooth because you're fussing about a stubbed toe. I've been there. I was in a situation where I was so mad I managed to push my car a short distance uphill, something I was unable to do normally. When I calmed down I started noticing all the aches from over-exerted muscles.

That's what I was taught in biology class in high school. Basically that your muscles will feel pain and even shut down if overexerted. It's basically a safety mechanism to avoid injuring yourself. If a person is on an adrenaline rush, the pain is ignored by thew body and you are and to push your body well past the usual limits.

It is not really "super strength, more like "surprising strength."

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Originally Posted by Zorro

[hijack] My father was on board that ship.

He doesn't talk about the fire. He changes the subject the rare occasions it comes up, actually. [/hijack]

Mine too. He does the same thing. I've seen video of it, I can't blame him.

That's what I was taught in biology class in high school. Basically that your muscles will feel pain and even shut down if overexerted. It's basically a safety mechanism to avoid injuring yourself. If a person is on an adrenaline rush, the pain is ignored by thew body and you are and to push your body well past the usual limits.

The downside of course is that you do injure yourself, so I guess the plan is that once you escaped the dangerous situation you spend the next day in bed with the Cramps From Hell.

I had also heard that it is not super-strength, but strength we have... but some part of our brain knows that if we actually use it, we could hurt ourselves. And that self-preservation instinct tells us to not injure ourselves. I don't know if an adrenaline rush is a subconscious way of telling our self-preservation instinct "NFBSK off, this is more important," or what the deal is. But, if the theory presented in my first sentence is actually true, it could explain why feats of "super-human strength" are often attributed to those of limited mental capabilities... because perhaps they lack that part that knows that if they use that strength, they could hurt themselves.

I've done something that could be seen as "surprising strength".. I was showing off for some people and said I could do a back-bend. That's where you lean back slowly while reaching your arms over your head and place your hands on the ground. There is a moment where you can't control your speed and your arms have to be ready to stop the fall before your head hits the ground. Since I hadn't done the move in a while, my arms weren't ready and my forehead hit the sidewalk.

I remember it hurting, and I remember standing there and putting my hand to my head to check for blood. I couldn't remember either kicking myself back over (moving into a handstand and then standing up), or laying down on my back and standing up. I asked my friend (now husband) how I came to be in an upright position and he told me that I'd bent over backwards, hit my head, and stood right back up on my feet again. I disagreed with him because there was no way I had/have the abdominal muscles to pull myself back into a standing position. At that point other bystanders confirmed that I had indeed leaned back and then stood straight back up.

A while later out of curiosity I attempted to stand up out of that position and I just couldn't figure out how to do it.

So I'll agree that it's partly about using strength you were unaware you had, and partly about not thinking about limitations and just doing.

I wonder if there's such thing as drunken strength? Drunken injury-immunity exists, so why not?

I would think inebriation would prevent you from maintaining focus to commit anything that requires acts of strength in the first place. Immunity from pain while drunk also has to do with inebriation simply altering the affects of pain registration in the brain - something alcohol does easily.

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But the pulled muscle could well kill you if the escaping takes a while.

Yea, but your body is going to respond more towards a more critical immediate threat than a potential one - it doesn't lay things out in a complete what-if scenario. Your brain covers that.

I would think inebriation would prevent you from maintaining focus to commit anything that requires acts of strength in the first place. Immunity from pain while drunk also has to do with inebriation simply altering the affects of pain registration in the brain - something alcohol does easily.

In addition to that, being drunk makes the body all relaxed and "floppy." Some things that would cause you serious injury if you tensed up would cause you little to no injury if you were loose. Thing is, when we're sober, we can see some of these injury-causing things coming, we freak out and tense up. When drunk, we might not see them coming at all... or we might see them coming, but have a hugely delayed reaction time (takes longer to process the threat as being a threat).

As far as drunken strength? I dunno... but to be fair, I lack the appropriate experience to be sure. I'm thinking "loose and floppy" might get in the way... but then I think that would also depend on just how drunk a person was.

The evidence is frustratingly thin here ó but thereís one example of our musclesí amazing capabilities that may point to the possibility of hysterical strength, and thatís what happens when our bodies are shocked with electricity. Youíve heard of people being thrown across rooms by shocks, or their hands clamping down on live wires so hard they canít be loosed? Itís not the current that causes it, but our musclesí reaction to the current. If nothing else, it demonstrates the potential for muscle use thatís not normally available to us.

So the verdict is: maybe! But until scientists begin staging lab experiments where moms have to pull their children out from underneath cars, we may never know for certain.

What I found when I was wight-lifting was that I could tell my muscles were capable of more than what my mind would let them do. My ability to lift weights progressed faster than my muscle developmnt did, because my mind would say, 'oh, well, this is not that much more than the previous lift, and that one did not hurt.' Or something like that. Thre were a number of times I would 'attmpt' a lift with an attitude that I might not be able to move the bar, and I would not be able to, but then I would give myself an internal pep talk, and usually be able to not just lift, but do several reps. Perhaps adrenaline and the other circumstances that allow extra strength also allow the mind to think it can be done.

This study supports what others have said about emergency situations (or even just being drunk) inhibiting our normal beliefs that we can't do a certain thing. It was published in 1961, so it may be outdated by now, but these researchers found that:

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An analysis of these data and that of others leads us to regard all performances short of the maximum limit, which is always imposed by the structure and prevailing physiologic state of the performing muscles, to be manifestations of acquired inhibitions that in turn are subject to disinhibition by pure Pavlovian procedures, by anesthetization of inhibitory mechanisms, or by pharmacologically induced symptoms serving as stimuli for disinhibition.

There's also a Human Giant skit about the idea that stress makes mothers super-strong. As a warning - there is some potentially offensive humor in this skit, especially regarding adoption. But I have to share it anyway.

What I found when I was wight-lifting was that I could tell my muscles were capable of more than what my mind would let them do. My ability to lift weights progressed faster than my muscle developmnt did, because my mind would say, 'oh, well, this is not that much more than the previous lift, and that one did not hurt.' Or something like that. Thre were a number of times I would 'attmpt' a lift with an attitude that I might not be able to move the bar, and I would not be able to, but then I would give myself an internal pep talk, and usually be able to not just lift, but do several reps. Perhaps adrenaline and the other circumstances that allow extra strength also allow the mind to think it can be done.

Interesting. But it's pretty well known that you can gain strength neurologically, without gaining muscle. I would suggest less talking yourself into doing it, rather not talking yourself out of it.

"Competition" adrenaline does/can increase lifting ability though. I squatted 92.5kg last Sat in a meet, while in training even holding 90 felt hard. Form was bad; I was too focused on getting it to think, but also willing to allow slip just that once. I guess in emergency circumstances, when not caring about injury and just going anyhow, I could lift a fair bit more.